


Adventures In Coaching

by Cesare



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Athletes, Coach Victor Nikiforov, Comfort Food, Food, Foreign Language, Insecurity, Introspection, Language Barrier, M/M, dieting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/pseuds/Cesare
Summary: Victor thinks he may be a terrible coach, but Yuuri is the best student, so maybe it'll work out.Content note: concerns food, dieting, and reference to canon weight issues/name-calling.





	

Victor spends three days with Google Translate, Memrise, and various YouTube videos, all to try to figure out how to say perhaps two sentences, because he is probably a terrible coach.

A good coach doesn’t coddle his skaters. A good coach doesn’t feel guilty about enforcing a healthy diet for his skaters. Yakov has heartlessly overseen many tasteless meals of sprouts and bitter green things crammed into Victor’s grimacing mouth. Victor would swear Yakov takes a special pleasure in making him eat endive, Victor’s least favorite so-called food on this earth. Most likely as part of an extended plot to keep Victor from complaining about kale, which practically tastes like candy compared to wretched endive.

Victor is not Yakov, though. He’s often tempted to coddle Yuuri. It’s just his good luck that Yuuri is allergic to coddling: if Victor ever tries to give him a break, Yuuri straightens indignantly and goes back to work, twice as hard. And then Victor gets to smirk and pretend he knew that would happen and did it on purpose. 

Diet, though, is harder. At first he felt justified and righteous, barring Yuuri from rich food. Yuuri asked Victor months ago to be his coach, but then he disappeared, only to suddenly beckon Victor to him again with his beautiful heartfelt skating video. But then he behaved as if he hadn’t expected Victor to actually come. That stung. And while he looked gorgeous, the ten pounds he’d put on since the GPF dragged down his jump height and had to go.

Victor is still sad that Yuuri wouldn’t let Victor near him then, that Victor never got to touch him when he looked so lush and cuddly. But he has only himself to blame. Victor and Yuuri have English in common, so that’s what they speak to each other. When Yurio began calling Yuuri “pig” in English, Victor got suspicious and looked it up, and discovered that “piglet” and “pig” in English are insulting. Victor thought it was like порося, a cute little nickname! Terrible. That’s one of the reasons Victor is being so careful now, checking and checking two sentences in Japanese so he doesn’t give offense.

These days Yuuri is lean again, and spending every day in intensive training. His diet doesn’t have to be so strict. And Victor feels a little bad when he eats delicious food while Yuuri glumly chews grilled tofu. As his coach, Victor should have a harder heart, but he has a terrible weakness for Yuuri’s smile.

So Victor plans to ask Hiroko a favor, if he can just be sure he has the words right. Only here he is, failing as a coach again, because while he does yet another search for Japanese cooking terms, he nearly misses Yuuri’s first successful quad flip.

It’s sheer chance he looks up at the right moment to see it. Well, sheer chance and the fact that Victor has been skating almost since he could stand, and he knows in every cell what it sounds like when a skater is building up speed for a jump; he’s glanced up each time while Yuuri practices his jumps, triple axel, quad Sal, triple flip. And then this time: he seems to hang in the air, turning turning turning turning and landing with that satisfying crisp _chok_  of the blade hitting the ice just right.

Victor puts his phone aside and launches himself across the ice, laughing. “Yuuri! That was perfect! Is that the first time you’ve landed a quad flip?”

“Yes,” Yuuri smiles, glowing with pride. And also sweat. Both look good on him. Victor would do almost anything to see Yuuri proud like this more often. It never lasts as long as it should– even now Yuuri’s already faltering. “I mean, I know that’s not really– you do that one all the time, practically in your sleep–”

“Yes yes, I’m consistent with it now, but it took a year of trying. Yuuri. How many skaters in the _world_ have landed a quad flip?” He can see Yuuri already trying to shrug it off; Victor takes him by the shoulders and squeezes, like he could push the pride back into him. “Three, in competition. Just three! And you’ll be the fourth.”

Yuuri’s eyes go wide. “I did it _once!_ I can’t put it into a program!”

“You did it once, so we know you _can_ do it. Now you just practice til you’re confident with it. We won’t add it in til you’re ready. But we will add it in,” Victor taps the tip of Yuuri’s nose for emphasis. “You’ll be doing that jump at the Final.”

“What if I’m not ready in time?”

“That’s why we’re here. To get you ready.” Victor wants to smooth back Yuuri’s hair, kiss him, pull him into a reassuring hug. But that’s not what Yuuri wants from him, so Victor claps his hands, gliding back. “Don’t do that one again today. Rest on it, let it sink in. Work on your combinations. Ah!” He can see Yuuri ready to argue; Victor points at him. “Listen to your coach, hm?”

Yuuri sets his shoulders and nods.

“Good.”

When they get back to the onsen, Victor follows Hiroko into the kitchen, where his two carefully prepared sentences fall to pieces under her kind attention. He’s reduced to gestures and what he only hopes is a comprehensible request for the katsudon she often makes for one serving, but in two bowls. 

The part he was trying hardest to say politely and without causing offense, a request for less rice in each portion to cut down on the carbs, comes out as a weak, phonetically sounded out  _ame-rika o suku-naku shite mo yoi,_ which probably barely sounds like words to poor Hiroko, and is most likely the wrong words, besides. He gives up and tries it in English, and receives a sympathetic pat on the arm.

She brightly agrees, and soon Victor is able to bring out two little bowls of katsudon and place one in front of Yuuri, who looks up startled and says, “I didn’t win anything.”

“You won your coach’s award for best quad flip of the day,” Victor says grandly. Never mind that he’d been planning this anyway– that he just couldn’t eat Yuuri’s favorite food in front of him again while Yuuri drooped over a salad.

Victor is a terrible coach. Much too soft. He should prioritize Yuuri’s ultimate success over his present happiness, that’s his _job_ as a coach, he knows that.

It’s only that Victor lived that way himself for so long, and putting off his present happiness for later success eventually took the joy out of succeeding and left it hollow. He doesn’t want that for Yuuri. A little present happiness now and then has to be okay. Or what’s the point?

Yuuri looks dubious, even as his fingers twitch toward his chopsticks at the smell. “It’s just one jump.”

“Small win, small katsudon,” Victor tries, and that seems to work. Yuuri smiles down, looking pink and pleased, and picks up the chopsticks.

“I’ll add ten minutes to my jog tomorrow,” Yuuri decides before digging in.

“Good. I knew you’d suggest it yourself,” says Victor. Yuuri gives him a skeptical look, but Victor would have known if he’d thought about it. 

Yuuri has been a paragon of self-discipline. He always works hard, he responds to challenge like a champion, and his talent has never been in question by anyone but Yuuri himself. If he doesn’t dominate at the Grand Prix Final, they will only have Victor’s coaching to blame.

At times Victor wonders if he’s doing the right thing. Yuuri wanted him as a coach, and no one wants to see Yuuri fulfill his tremendous potential more than Victor does. But Victor is making a lot of this up as he goes along. A more experienced coach could help fill in the gaps. The trouble is that if Victor invited another coach in for a few weeks, Yuuri would almost certainly believe that he was the one in need of extra help, not Victor. Victor isn’t willing to risk Yuuri’s confidence, when that has always been his softest spot.

Anyway, who would he ask? Yakov is the best coach Victor ever had, and Victor already knows backwards and forwards what Yakov would do and say. The whole of which, in this situation, would be for Victor to drop this and get back to competing. And other coaches who’ve been asked in interviews about Victor joining their ranks have been polite but dismissive. There’s no one Victor trusts to evaluate him properly and advise him.

He’s lucky that it’s Yuuri, who drives himself as much as any coach ever could, and improves on himself day after day; who often only seems to need Victor to _be here_ to work his hardest and give his best.

“Thank you,” Yuuri says as they tidy up after dinner.

“Mm, thank _you,”_ says Victor, still in reverie.

“I’ll land it again tomorrow,” Yuuri tells him, all but shining with determination. “The quad flip. I’ll land it again. I will.”

“I know you will,” Victor smiles. “I’m glad to hear you know it, too.”

Yuuri beams at him, and it feels like the solid _chok_ of the blade meeting the ice just right; it’s a success, however small, that is still filled with all its joy.


End file.
